How a HR Consultant can add value to your startup

For growing startups, the flexibility of having a HR consultant come into the business at short notice to assess what you do or perhaps do not have in your people function is critical. The urgency to recruit, retain and develop employees is paramount to the long term success of the company. With this knowledge and hands on experience a HR Consultant can provide the flexibility to work with a startup to support them in achieving their key goals in a time-efficient and cost effective manner. Here are the main areas where a HR Consultant to can add value to your startup;

Expertise - Whether you are a startup with no people function or you have one HR employee, a HR consultant can provide expert knowledge and guidance on what would benefit the company and its people. This could be in the form of establishing a day to day operational HR function that assists in upgrading the business on its HR best practices providing all employees with the best service. As well as working with key stakeholders a HR consultant can advise on processes and initiatives that will lower attrition and promote productivity giving startups access to a dedicated trusted advisor.

Recruitment - A HR consultant can easily advise on recruitment processes and strategies to attract top talent to your startup. The time it takes to recruit and manage the process can be lengthy, not forgetting the cost incurred if recruitment knowledge is low within the business. Many small businesses often cannot afford to waste time and money on expanding their workforce therefore, a HR consultant can assist in creating a customized recruitment strategy that can ultimately save you thousands in your cost per hire.

Diplomacy - Like in any growing business the need for conflict management and dealing with employee relations issues can occur. A HR consultant can assist you in handling difficult employee situations, compliant casework as well as performance management issues. A HR consultant can cut the cost of legal fees by providing the mediation framework for managing these issues and putting strategies in place to minimise future risk to the business.

Motivation and Engagement - A HR consultant can look at your startup holistically to assess what trends and patterns are emerging in your employee turnover, engagement levels,and absenteeism. This will give small businesses the metrics they need to see where engagement is low and how much this is costing them every year. In adding value, a HR consultant can provide the analysis of causes behind each area and suggest a employee survey format, 360 feedback, OD interventions and L&D training plans that can ensure engagement stays high.

Strategy - For startups with no people function a HR Consultant can devote their time to designing and implementing your workforce planning strategy. It also gives small companies the option to leave the HR function to be managed and owned by a skilled professional freeing up your time to focus on achieving key business growth goals.

A HR Consultant can add value to any startup and this is seen consistently as more and more small businesses turn to this specialist expertise every year in order to promote growth. 

The benefits of working with a HR consultancy firm

For a lot of small businesses the need for a HR consultancy firm can come from out of nowhere. The sudden pull of company growth can leave a vacuum stemming from the need for HR Support that has either been absent or limited since day one. It quickly becomes clear that future growth will be dependent on a number of factors including the search for a specialist HR consulting service who can support and guide along the way. More and more business startups are looking towards remote HR consultancy companies in order to meet this need and here’s why;

1, Outsourcing - A human resource consultancy firm can provide a wide variety of numerous outsourcing solutions for small businesses. This can be from HR administration, Payroll processing, recruitment and providing employment law advice. Moving this workload to a HR services company can not only save company money but give you back the time to focus on continuous growth.

2, People Management - HR consultancy firms can also support with people management planning such as recruitment drives, performance management and employee development initiatives. If you want to retain top talent and create a high performance working environment then human resource consulting is the solution you need.

3, Recruitment/HR Technology - A big part of establishing a company is ensuring you have the correct HR and Recruitment systems in place to not only manage your workforce but also provide HR metric reporting to the business. A human resource consultancy company will liaise with vendors to gain all information around specifications and costing which can later be educated to managers using the system as part of a company wide roll out. Most importantly HR consulting firms can help in ensuring the database stayed up to date and the data is cleansed for continuous accurate business reporting.

4, Employee Wellbeing - Establishing employee health and well being benefits can be a drawn out process taking up valuable time for key stakeholders in the business. HR Consultancy firms can manage the setup right from the design process through to liaising with providers in the final implementation phase. Also, later ensuring that the benefits administration is managed consistently and communicated to all employees.

5, Audit Compliance - Like with any rapidly growing business the need for HR and local employment law compliance is essential. This is a key area where a HRconsulting firm can come in and audit your business to check if it is compliant with local legislation. This can range from right to work checks, employment contract design or policy formation - all of which can be managed efficiently by an outsourced HR consulting firm.

With the number of startup businesses in the UK alone going up by 4.6% in 2015 and the projected data for 2016 to be even greater the need for partnering with an effective HR consultancy firm has never been more vital.